Incubus
by Odyssion
Summary: Itachi lets Naruto know exactly whose fault it is that Sasuke has defected from Konoha.
1. Part I

_Disclaimer:_ This is a purely non-profit story written for entertainment purposes only. The characters of Naruto do not belong to me.

_Author's Notes: _Really messed up piece. Itachi is very Orochimaru-esque, and I apologize if he's too OOC. This takes place after Naruto and Sasuke's big fight before Sasuke leaves the village. Slightly AU, of course, since this didn't actually happen. It's not meant to be ItaNaru, but I guess you could take it that way. I tortured someone other than Sasuke or Kakashi for a change!

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**Incubus**

"Look how much your dream has cost him."

They are caught under the watchful gaze of a troubled sky. Filtered light casts itself through a gridded window, marking the moon's luminance. Making monsters from thin air. Too startled to speak, too afraid and worried and exhausted, wide cerulean eyes stare vulnerably into an abyss of red.

"He left… because of you."

Persuasion drips like honeyed poison, every word as lethal as the truth. He can only stare at this phantom before him, as translucent as a dream. There is no intent in those guarded eyes, no blatant hostility. He could almost believe that it was all in his imagination.

Finally he finds his voice, but he cannot tear his eyes away. "N-no. He left because he wanted power." He doesn't understand this need to defend himself against someone with more to explain. Logic abandons him like the retreating tide.

The face that is so familiar to him, its skin as pale and its hair as dark – similar yet not the same – forms a sceptical expression. Gaunter than Sasuke, he thinks, as he stares fervently into crimson eyes. More deadly.

"Why would he want more power?"

Lying alone on a hospital bed, recuperating from near-fatal wounds, he cannot understand why he doesn't experience more fear. There is no one to hear him scream but the hallways, no way to protect himself but to smile. He would not want to face Uchiha Itachi on a regular day; he especially did not want him here now. A chill runs up his spine at the thought that he could die before even realising it.

Maybe that's why, he thinks languidly as Itachi shifts slightly on the bed – making it creak ominously. To scream to nothing is futile, and he's far too tired for that. His mind feels drugged. Even with a murderer at the base of his bed, he can barely keep his eyes open.

"Because he wants to kill you. He's trying to avenge his family."

His heart is hammering fiercely; he can feel the blood rushing to the pumping muscle in his chest, can feel the concentrated air burn on its way to his lungs.

"You're wrong," Itachi says softly, a hint of venom in his voice as he looks away briefly. "You see, Naruto, you pushed him away."

Suffocated by crimson, he can feel his anger rising. "No! I never did anything to-to – we were friends! I would never make him leave."

"Friends." Itachi's voice remains unconvinced. "He would've stayed, but then you just had to go and get stronger, didn't you? You knew how he felt about that."

"I—" The tubes that lead into his body encircle them like vultures, like demons. "I had to get stronger! I want to become Hokage!" As if embarrassed, the IV drips quietly into his arm.

Itachi does not give pause. "Ah yes. You need the strength to become Hokage. I wonder… how do you intend to protect an entire village when you can't even protect someone you say is your friend? Or perhaps, you only _pretended_ to be his friend?"

The fog in his brain will not lift, and there is something pressing down hard on his heart. "He was my friend!" The pain in his chest will not subside. It's not that he's afraid, he realizes as Itachi moves to sit beside his broken right arm. The twang of guilt is now unmistakable.

As tenderly as a lover, Itachi leans in to whisper into Naruto's ear. "You claim to be his friend, yet you used the power of the Kyuubi against him. Not very sporting, is it?"

Haunting accusations. He replays their fight in his mind's eye, sees the fierce look of determination and pride and – _you fool_ – guilt that burdens Sasuke, sees the apology he hadn't before. The patterns on the ceiling blur into nothing.

"He never treated you like a monster, but you betrayed him anyway. Sly, sly fox."

He clenches his left hand, and feels the needle shift in his skin. "No…"

"And after he was so loyal to you!" Itachi's breath tickles his ear. "Refusing to kill you to get the Mangekyo Sharingan. Do you know that if he had, there would be no need for him to seek out Orochimaru? If he had killed you, all the power in the world would have been at his disposal."

Itachi straightens and sits up again, and for a moment Naruto thinks it is over. The soft voice is further away, but now a pair of horrifying eyes has erased the world.

"But now he is at the mercy of a revolting seal that divests his body," Itachi practically spits out. "The Hidden Village of the Sound is not a pleasant place. It is full of vermin, all scrabbling pathetically at their attempts for life."

It is simply he and Itachi, floating in an unreal world of light. He cannot feel his body.

"Do you know what Orochimaru does to his… subordinates?"

And then there is screaming.

There is bile at the back of his throat, threatening to overtake him. Flashes of red all around. He hears the crack of bone, cartilage – lifeless vessels of departed souls. When finally there is silence, blissful, ringing silence, the throaty whisper of a madman takes over the only body left. Before he can gag, the scene has shifted.

An outline. He knows it is Sasuke – knows it, senses it – because his heart is still hammering. Before he can emit a sound, there is another body beside the Uchiha's – tall and slim, but powerful. When the man's hand touches Sasuke's cheek, Naruto feels the coldness of slim fingers on his face. He feels the clothes slide off his body, feels the goosebumps that trail over his skin as mutilated hands explore, feels Sasuke's shame. There's a burning in his groin as a stolen body molests him, a searing so blindingly painful and all he can hear is Orochimaru's laughter and Sasuke's moans and somewhere in the background someone is screaming …

… and he is in the white room with Itachi again, his throat as raw and dry as the desert. Tears fall silently from his eyes.

"No more," he manages to rasp out, his tone pleading. "Please…"

In the hospital, Itachi smiles and toys with a strand of blond hair; wipes away a stray tear that falls from blank blue eyes. In his world, he only makes a mock-disappointed face as Naruto sits crumpled on the ground.

"You see, Naruto? The fact of the matter is, Sasuke pushed his body to the limit by using Level Two of the curse seal to fight you, and now he has no other choice _but_ to defect, lest he die before he completes his dream."

He kneels in front of Naruto, gingerly tilting his chin. "Weren't you the one that talked about believing in dreams? Right now, my unfortunate little brother could be…"

Blood smeared on the ancient trunks of foreign trees, barely distinguishable from the dark bark. There are footsteps in the mud. Naruto follows, sickened, already knowing what he will see. _I won't scream_. He tries to convince himself that it's all an illusion. _I won't scream._

"Sasuke—" 

His throat is hoarse by the time they are back again. He has become a permanent fixture on the floor, a tacky decoration that has yet to be thrown out. The sardonic voice is ever present.

"Ah well." There is no remorse. "He's lucky if he dies before he ever makes it to the lair of that snake."

The white bleeds away. Naruto has never been so glad to see the moon.

There is a hand caressing his face. "I seem to have taken up enough of your time for today. You'll need to rest if you want to fulfill your big dream." Itachi is a pillar of death as he stands. "Hopefully your other friends won't meet such an… unfortunate fate."

"Wait!" he can't stop himself from calling out, and he feels the hot trail of tears down his cheeks. "About Sasuke… please…"

Itachi turns around slowly, the smile on his face more sinister than reassuring. "What about him?"

And he is lost. "Won't you help him?" In his desperation, this is not a foolish question. It's his fault that Sasuke is gone, and it's his job to get him back.

Itachi is pulling the covers to his chin and tucking him in. "I'll make you a deal, Naruto. Since you seem so worried about my little brother, I'll help you rescue him. You and I can go and bring him back to Konoha together, and I promise he'll be safe."

There is dead silence as Naruto listens raptly. "All I want from you in return is that you take a little trip with me afterwards."

"A trip?" He is drifting off to sleep. Itachi's voice skirts by his mind.

"That's right. It won't take long. I have some friends that are dying to meet you."

"Friends…"

"I'll be back in a week to hear your decision."

Sky eyes have already closed in slumber as the incubus departs. Outside, the moon is ever watchful.

**END**

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_AN:_ Good, bad? Should I write a sequel? I'd love to hear your opinion. 


	2. Part II

_Author's Notes:_ After much deliberation and urging, I've finally written a sequel/epilogue-esque conclusion for this story. The idea came to me many months ago and half of this story was written and sitting untouched on my hard drive. Although I'm rather happy with the way this piece turned out, in my experience sequels tend to destroy the original, which was the main reason I didn't write this for so long. Nonetheless, should you decide to read, I would love to get your opinion.

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Sunrises and sunsets, all interspersed by silence. It is a parable of sorts that has become fact. And so dawns the longest week of his life, counting down the seconds until the inevitable decision would need to be given. His mind is made up, and has been since Itachi vanished into the night. Naruto knows this; Itachi knows this. This grace period for reflection is something he neither likes nor appreciates. He becomes unsettled as medics buzz in and out around him, bringing food, administering medication, examining his physical state while he tries so hard to keep his thoughts private. Naruto is marking the days until he can rectify everything he has managed to do wrong.

He goes to sleep with numbers on his mind.

"Kakashi-sensei," he says on the fifth day when the man has come for a visit. "Why doesn't anyone blame me?"

One onyx eye gazes at him for a long time and a swirl of thoughts chase their way across its depths. "Blame you for what, Naruto?"

_You already know what._ "Everything—this whole mess. Sasuke…"

Kakashi lets out a heavy sigh. "No one's to blame for that. And if you insist on making it someone's fault, I'm more to blame than you are."

_No._ He is silent. _Sasuke never envied your strength. You never pushed him away._

"Sakura-chan is angry, isn't she?" he asks finally. "That's why she hasn't come to visit."

His sensei looks startled for a moment, as if this fact has never been brought to his attention, but Kakashi is a shinobi to the core and pulls his features into a mask of empathetic understanding. "She probably doesn't want to disturb you, Naruto."

_She blames me._

"And she's still coming to terms with what happened. Give it some time. I'm sure she'll be by to visit soon."

Discreet knocking on the door stops them, dispersing their words. A medic pokes her head in apologetically, explains his medication to Kakashi and his sensei gets up to leave, promising to be back in a few days to check up on him. Naruto doesn't care too much as the needle slides effortlessly into his vein and causes his arm to tingle, thinking that in a few days he wouldn't be there to greet Kakashi anyway.

--

"And your decision is?"

On the night of the seventh day, Itachi's voice tears off the scab that has been sheltering his wounds. He is suffocated by the darkness when this man appears.

"After I see Sasuke," he says hesitantly, not yet willing to trust, "I'll go with you."

"Very well." Itachi is the epitome of calmness. "Sasuke will return to Konoha. At midnight tomorrow, I will be back for you."

If these terms are objectionable, Naruto doesn't have time to dispute them. The moon melts into the clouds and Itachi is taken away with the hidden light.

He opens his eyes again to a rush of noise and commotion.

"He was just slumped by the village gates," someone whispers outside his door, and Naruto doesn't need to be told who it is they're whispering about. There is much more movement during the day. The regular medic who brings his meal is flustered when he asks about the situation, and that's almost all the proof he needs. His ears strain to trace the path of the footsteps; when it is dark, he slips free of the tubes that have clung like parasites to his body, shedding his unnatural existence. With the small amount of chakra he has within him he performs a minor camouflage genjutsu and slips, unnoticed, into the hospital corridors.

His breathing is laborious by the time he can feel Sasuke's presence. He eases himself into the room. On the bed, lined with tubes in much the same manner as himself, Sasuke is a miserable excuse for a human body. Lumps that appear at first to be cancerous flesh, traitorous pores, are in fact the jutted edge of broken bone, not quite cracking the skin. His dark hair is matted and bloody, shorn haphazardly where numerous sharp objects must have narrowly missed. Naruto clutches his stomach to prevent upchucking sick all over himself and winces at the pain the movement causes.

Half-stumbling, half-dragging, his feet convey the lumbering mass of his body to the bedside of his best friend. Sasuke's hard-fought breathing moves the expanse of his chest just barely, just enough to create the millimetres of progress signifying life. Wrapped in the sterile embrace of white, his skin is paler still. When Naruto reaches out a trembling hand to touch the nearest incandescent cheek, he finds that the organism beneath is chillingly close to death.

"Sasuke," he breathes, the air from his lips misting the tube that caresses his friend's face. Long dark lashes, the stroke of a master calligrapher, flutter ever so slightly. Every muscle in Sasuke's body, all the strings supporting the puppet, pull taunt as the tell-tale frown encumbers his strangely unmarred face. When he relaxes again, limbs limp and brows creaseless, Naruto is suddenly certain that Sasuke will live.

The death he expelled in his exhale would morph to become Naruto's demise.

When he finally heaves himself back into the confines of his own room of malady, he is unsurprised to find the signer of his contract waiting. Itachi's eyes are a hellish red at the height of this Faustian dementia. When Itachi beckons to him, the clock on the wall begins to chime.

"He'll live?" Naruto asks despite knowing the truth, despite knowing the lies.

"Yes." Itachi is an angel of death framed before the premonition of an engorged moon. Naruto begins to understand, under the immensity of such perfect roundness, that this is a trip from which he will not return. He has always known, within the caverns of his soul; it is only tonight, with the inescapable bidding of Itachi's outstretched hand, that he is capable of accepting the truth.

"Sleep," Itachi says when their fingers meet, and instantly his eyes are anchors. It is with surprising gentleness that he feels himself lifted, his head and legs cradled by slender, powerful arms.

"Sleep," Itachi says again. The last sliver of light vanishes behind his closed eyelids, and the world is no more.

--

They form a curious picture; two grown men in cloaks of black and red, one young boy with a shock of golden hair in an even brighter jumpsuit of orange. The boy is unconscious; one of the men has grey-tinted skin. Instinct screams danger while politeness asks why. They are unassuming in their gait, neither forbearing nor hurried, protected by their aura of mystery and power. The young man who carries the boy, who appears to lead them, could once have been called handsome; but he is now too corrupted by the touch of the world to seem anything but lonely and severe.

They had been a group of two, entering a hidden village far away from where they are. It could even be argued that they had entered as a group of one, for the grey-skinned man kept watch on the edge of the town gate, perched impatiently on a secluded branch. A fish in a tree. The dark-haired young man with the unnatural eyes had passed the border, unseen, to undertake a small token of business. He re-emerged not ten minutes later, bringing with him a very colourful package. It is the first and only time they have broken into this city of splendour by night.

Rain falls on the unlikely travelling company as Naruto continues to slumber under the influence of Itachi's persuasion, unaware of his own plight, unaware of Sasuke's. Through the link of their bloodline, through the turmoil of their souls, Itachi can feel the ever weaker presence of his brother where it had always been, delving deeper into the lair of snakes.

There were no more Uchiha in the Village of the Leaf.

"Why did you go to the trouble of tricking him?" Kisame asks. The Kyuubi would have been theirs regardless, but even he is amazed at the ease with which his partner manages to snare this cunning and most powerful of all tailed creatures. Mingled in with admiration, with the wonder of this unknowable feat, is the disappointment of losing what had promised to be an entertaining battle.

Itachi's steps do not hesitate for even a fraction of a moment. "To ensure that his soul will never be able to escape us."

His hands tighten imperceptibly around their precious cargo. The constant friction of cloth on cloth has rolled up the bottom of Naruto's shirt, exposing the seemingly harmless swirl that would come to define a nation. Kisame spares half a glance at the ginger-hued pattern before disregarding the conversation with a noncommittal shrug.

"Escape was never a possibility to begin with."

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**end**


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